Innocent Patient Dies Too Soon

A patient in a nursing home tragically passed away recently due to an avoidable overdose. This overdose was in no way any fault of his own. In fact, the autopsy report showed that the cancer patient was receiving opioids to help with his immense pain at the time. However, the night that he passed away, he had 20X more of the medication in his bloodstream than was prescribed in his files.

After digging in to the cause of the overdose, investigators learned that the nursing home didn’t have any sort of system or list of procedures in place for this type of medicine administration- mind blowing. Of course this was flagged, as it does not meet guidelines listed by the local, state, and federal regulations.

The resident was originally admitted on a short-term basis for cancer treatment and obstructive pulmonary disease, with his dosage of painkillers changing concentrations frequently because of other medications he was on at the time.

The night before the overdose, the patient rated his pain as a 10/10–the highest number he could have given. The nurse assigned to him mistakenly administered 30 milliliters rather than the prescribed 30 milligrams, reporting later that she was “busy with multiple patients.”

Later that evening, the nurse and another nursing home coworker found the man unresponsive on the floor. After multiple attempts at resuscitation, they were unsuccessful and pronounced the patient deceased.

These sort of cases are discovered more often than we would like to admit. This cancer patient was truly in need of the opioid medication, but within certain, prescribed doses. This nurse, not meaning any harm, carelessly misread the prescribed dosage and wound up ending the life of a innocent person prematurely.

Thankfully this doesn’t have to be the case any more. With spencer, medication adherence is easy and worry-free. You can rest assured that your loved one will not ever be given the incorrect dosage because of human error. Learn more by clicking here!